Shock BOJ appointment sparks rush for Japanese economist's obscure texts

[February 13, 2023]  By Kantaro Komiya and Satoshi Sugiyama

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prices of academic books written by the surprise pick for the Bank of Japan's new governor have shot up in recent days and the publisher of one of his volumes on monetary policy said it was considering new runs to meet demand.

The news late on Friday that 71-year-old Kazuo Ueda is likely to helm the BOJ, left investors scrambling to work out what lies ahead for the world's third-largest economy under a man not even considered to have been in the race.

Ueda served on the central bank's board between 1998 and 2005 but has since been out of the limelight, working in academia and at think tanks - making it hard to assess his views on Japan's decade-long ultra-easy policy experiment.

Some are turning to his scholarly titles for clues, but they are proving hard, and expensive, to come by.

A copy of his 2005 book "The Fight Against Zero Interest Rates", which has a recommended retail price of 1,700 yen ($13), was listed as having sold at 29,800 yen ($225) on e-commerce platform Mercari on Monday.

Other copies were being offered at prices as high as 35,288 yen ($266).

The book's publisher, Nikkei BP, told Reuters it was considering plans to reprint as well as to make the text available as an e-book. Only 8,500 copies were printed in the previous run and had all sold out, the publisher said.

Another Japanese-language title he wrote in 2017 was ranked as the best-selling e-book in the finance section on Amazon's Japan site on Monday. Hard copies of some of his other publications were sold out on the site.

A security officer is seen at the headquarters of Bank of Japan in Tokyo, Japan, January 17, 2023. REUTERS/Issei Kato

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is due to confirm his pick to succeed outgoing Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Tuesday.

Ueda is something of an unknown quantity for many in the markets, economists and analysts said.

The yen initially jumped on Friday on expectations that he could phase out ultra-loose policy earlier than expected, but quickly trimmed gains after he said in a television broadcast that current BOJ policy was "appropriate".

Ueda likely would not rush to overhaul loose policy and would instead let economic data guide the exit timing, said Tetsuya Inoue, Ueda's staff secretary when he was a central bank board member, told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

($1 = 132.4500 yen)

(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Satoshi Sugiyama; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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